


Cui cerca, trova; cui sècuta, vinci

by Adsilaflower



Series: Remember The Women When It's All Said And Done, For They Will Be The Ones Who Tell You What's Won [3]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: BAMF Women, Catholicism, Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Female-Centric, Grandmothers, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Introspection, Magical Realism, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Women in the Military, immigrant family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 05:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adsilaflower/pseuds/Adsilaflower
Summary: Lena makes 1st Sergeant on January 1st, 1943. Her family cheers over the telephone when she calls them, and even though she’s hundreds of miles from home, this isn’t a half-bad way to ring in the new year....When she’s reassigned to D.C., her commander advises her to hit the ground running. Lena mostly just hits the ground again and again and again.





	Cui cerca, trova; cui sècuta, vinci

 

    Her family is old blood, and Sicily holds a position in her family’s soul that is iron clad and shares with no one. Her grandmother talks about it as if she has never left, as if her grandchildren aren't American, Oregon born and bred, as if the street signs are in Sicilian, not English. She grows up wandering between worlds—old and new—rose syrup at home and cherry sweets with friends.

 

///

 

    Children can be cruel, cruel creatures. The amount of times she's been called _Wop bastard_ or _Guinea whore_ attests to that. Her temper gets away from her then, and she yells at them the way she’s heard her grandmother yell and then hits them for good measure. When her mother comes to the school, she looks disappointed in her, but later covers her bleeding knuckles in kisses, and Lena watches as the wounds close up under her love.

    She spends more time with her siblings than most children do, and together they grow up under the watchful eye of the two previous generations. Even under her grandmother's tutelage though, Lena’s love doesn’t ever heal cuts, her rose syrup is never sweet enough. It culminates in her crying over the kitchen counter that last Sunday before graduation because even her bread is bitter.

    “ _Cara,_ it’s fine” her mother says as she places her hand on Lena’s elbow to pull her away.

    “It’s not!” Lena’s other arm strikes out, knocking one of the wine bottles onto its side. Together, she and her mother watch as the red liquid seeps out from under the broken glass, dripping over the edge of the counter onto the white tile.

    Her grandmother pulls her aside after mass that day, and together they sit on the bench under the pear tree, far away from prying ears and eyes.

    “ _Mimma,_ there are things in this world that some of us are not made for,” her grandmother’s crackly voice washes over her in waves as she covers Lena’s hands with one of her’s, her wrinkled and weathered hands contrasting against Lena’s smooth ones, “and _magia_ is one of them.”

    “Nana—”

    “Listen to me _mimma,_ you never met your grandfather, but there is so much of him in you, including his strength. _Magia_ lives within those of us that it can mold, and you have to much will for your spirit to ever live with something that is not of you.”

    Her grandmother looks over at her, eyes shining with a clear sheen of tears. Lena can feel her own tears, slowly falling down her cheeks.

    “You are so much more than what you are not,” she says when Lena leans into her, and wraps her arms around Lena’s shaking frame.

    “I don’t want to be alone, Nana,” Lena says, her voice muffled against her grandmother's cotton shawl.

    “Oh _cara,_ you will never be alone.”

 

///

 

    She sits in shock with the rest of her family as they’re told the Nips have bombed Pearl Harbor. It does not occur to her that men across the country are leaping to their feet and loudly proclaiming, _“I’m gonna enlist. I’ll beat the Japs bloody until they fly home.”_

    This does not occur to her because her family is, more or less, Italian, and every generation before her has seen war in some form or another. Her mother, her grandmother, her great-grandmother, have all seen men march off to never return, and they have kept a family alive amidst starvation; her father, grandfather, and all the men before them since the beginning of time fought in wars they did not have a hand in starting. Lena Riggi knows what war does, but something in her draws her to it, despite centuries of traditions.

 

She doesn’t know it, but her country will be drawn into war in Europe.

That in years from now, two armies will bloody themselves across Sicily.

That painting, statues, and people will be stolen as Italy is bombed to ruins.

By Mussolini’s death, the country will be a shell of its former self.

 

///

 

    She is capable, she is smart, and she signs up to become part of the Women Marines, because there are no men in her family for this war, none to spill blood for a country that doesn’t know them. Every war needs a Riggi.

    She’s also very good, and it isn’t long before her superiors take notice of her initiative, her confidence, her iron fisted rule over the kitchen, and her ability to make even the most puffed up egocentric marine feel like scum under her shoe.

    She makes corporal less than a month after she finishes boot camp, then moves to lance corporal two weeks after. Lena makes 1st Sergeant on January 1st, 1943. Her family cheers over the telephone when she calls them, and even though she’s hundreds of miles from home, this isn’t a half-bad way to ring in the new year.

 

///

 

    Here is what Lena Riggi knows:

    It rains and rains and rains in Oregon. The rain is a constant throughout her childhood memories, running right along with her mother’s smile and her grandmother’s many tricks, but when she goes home after John's death, there is only sun.

  


///

 

_“I said, is anyone scared?_

_“No, Sargeant.”_

_“You lyin’ sacks of shit. It’s good to be scared, means you're awake, you're ready.”_

     Was John scared? Did his heart race as he left the safety of the boat? Did sweat drip down his neck as he made the assault on Iwo Jima? Was his laboured breathing because of fear or because of the shrapnel that had pierced his lungs and left him drowning in his own blood? Did he—

    “Christ!” she screams aloud. She can’t even think about it.

 

///

 

    In the summer of 1945, Command drags her off base for the dedication ceremony of the U.S.S. Basilone. She’s wearing her class A’s , which always make her feel like a doll, and John would always tease her about how stern she looked, saying the brass should send her to fight instead of him. She doesn’t feel like a doll now; she just feels numb. As she holds the folded flag she wants to yell, because John wouldn’t have wanted this. John would have wanted to be remembered not in a ship but in the memories of the men he trained, the men who survived, the places he’s been, by Manila and Jima and his family. Not by having his name painted on a ship that will be retired as soon as the war is over.

    She wants to scream, cry, and yell and make a spectacle because she lost her husband, her husband is gone and no pleasantries or memorials will ever make that hurt less. She wants to curl up and end it all, to have it stop because she is in pain. She couldn’t even bury him they gave her an empty casket and a flag that she didn’t want, she wants John, she wants to the day to end, and she want to admit defeat, and she wants it to end. But women are not made for defeat. A woman can be destroyed many times but never be defeated. And Lena Basilone—Lena Riggi—is destroyed everyday.

    She would never give it up though, because the pain comes with memories, it comes with love, and Lena would rather go through this every single day than forget John.

 

///

 

    Years later, it catches up with her. She does not get a happy ending, just a happy beginning, and a very happy in-between.

    She lives 50 years without—

_Without John._

    It feels like she’s impersonating someone every time she’s called Mrs. Basilone. As if she’s stealing the name of a happy woman, one with a loving husband and two beautiful children. A woman whose life is not characterized by being the widow of a dead marine, a hero who didn’t get his fairytale ending. An American ending, because John’s family has been here for generations and he never knew they way the world really worked. It’s Lena who was raised on stories where the witch eats the children, where the wolf eats the children, where the moon kills the happy ending, and there’s no priest in the world that can exercise the demons that Lena grew up knowing of. She knows that she was naive to think she could get away with it all.

  


///

 

    The month after John’s death she doesn’t bleed. She spends the next few days alternating between heart-wrenching pain and a happiness so bright she feels like she’s glowing. She thinks  about telling John’s family that their son is not wholly gone, that there’s a part of him that still exists. She thinks about telling her grandmother, her mother, that maybe she isn’t wholly broken, that she is capable of _maggia_. She finally works up the courage to call, saying to herself that tomorrow will be the day. She wakes up to tomorrow with the white sheets of the barrak red between her thighs, the other room in the room looking at her with sympathy in their eyes.

 

    When she’s reassigned to D.C., her commander advises her to try to forget it all and hit the ground running. Lena mostly just hits the ground again and again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> "Cui cerca, trova; cui sècuta, vinci" translates to "Who seeks, finds; who perseveres, wins"  
> I really wanted to write a story that focuses on Lena Riggi because she doesn't exist as a woman caught up in the war, she exists as a woman in the war, which creates a very interesting possible background.  
> Rose syrup is used in desserts and main dishes in Sicily.  
> The artworks referred to here are of course the paintings and statues seen in Monuments Men, of which the book its based on goes more in detail to.  
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
